Its a big shame that the weather for the past few days had not continued in today when we are due to travel on a small tourist boat along the Tagus river only we were let down as we had a very misty and grey morning so not the best for taking photos. Nevertheless we left the ship at about 10.00 being warned by the crew, you must be back on board by 14.00 or you will miss the departure at 14.30.
The tour guide explained that on Sundays coaches are not allowed in the town and so we must go round the outside and make a big circle to where we need to be. This sounded a little strange as there were tourist Hop and Hop off buses everywhere but Hey Hoe, go with the flow. After driving around the city past some very poor areas which were really depressing we arrived at the tour boat. T he boat took us for about 90 minutes up and own the Tagus river where you could see all the nice places and also the places when which been left to run down and return to mother nature. There was a difficulty with the boats microphone which luckily we had a nice quiet cruise without being bombarded with everything you need to know about Lisbon. I was able to take a quite a few photos which I will upload at a later date as the ships WIFI is limited and restricts access to certain sites and that included my SMUG MUG site.
There were lots of interesting statues and monuments alongside the river which i have photographed and to many for this blog but they will be uploaded to smug mug at the end of the trip when in Florida.
On the way back to the ship we were running late but they still made a stop at a site of importance and then our your lady tour guide star ted letting her hair down b]about what was wrong with Portugal. So the Government is in a mess and they recently arrested senior politicians for fraud and several other charges and to make matters worse they arrested a senior politician incorrectly as he had the same name as the real offender. The roads are extremely bad because the Government does not spend the money on the roads but on flights of fancy exhibitions buildings etc. The National Health Service does not work anymore as the Doctors were all totally overworked and as a result have gone out on strike and so to get and appointment is near on impossible and you need to go private to be seen. Where have I heard that before. Also 12 years a go they drew up and plan to resolve drain issues in a large part of the city to avoid flooding and then they said well it doesn't rain very much in Lisbon so why bother and the of course the inevitable happened it rained and it rained , in fact almost a whole years rain in two days and so certain parts of Lisbon were badly flooded and so now they have started on the work, so to speak, after the horse has bolted.
We arrived back at the port at about 13.50 and gad to rush to get on board before they closed the doors. We then headed up the outdoor Pizza restaurant where there was confusion and delay in getting a pizza with out garlic and onion as apparently all the tomato sauce which as a base for the pizza is premade with garlic and onions and so I had a non tomato base cheese pizza which was nice. Either there was a computer system error but the their hand held did not show my food issues which I reported later.
We were both now a little tired and returned to the cabin for a rest when at 17.00 the phone rang and in it was the finance officer saying they had located by USA ESTA but it was shown as Noel Groves and not Noel James Groves as per my passport and I need to apply for another ESTA as San Juan Immigration will fine me and the ship for this mistake, I did point out that I had used the same ESTA for my previous Silver Sea trip via San Juan o Fort Lauderdale and also also a separate flight arrival for our long stay Florida trips but she said it has to be right and need to apply for another one. So I retrieved my passport from reception and the completed a new application which was passed very quickly ,in fact in less than two hours since my application, amazing!. Of course they need to know lots of info, the basics plus the name of parents, who of course are longer here, and what social media I use so I provided the name of Blogger, Facebook and Linked-in .
For dinner we visited the Italian restaurant which actually has a restricted menu as far as Noel is concerned but was all ok and then feeling a little weary headed back to the room and early night.
